upFRONT

LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, February 1-4, 2000,
New York City, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center

LinuxWorld/LinuxExpo, February 3, 2000, Paris,
France

STRICTLY ON-LINE

The following articles are posted on Linux Journal
On-Line, our web site at
http://www.linuxjournal.com/. We wish we had
room to print every article in the magazine, but infinite space is
just not available. Also, all articles in the current issue and
past issues are posted on the LJ interactive
site at
http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/
for subscribers. Non-subscribers can find all articles for issues
1-32 (1994-1996) on the on-line site.

T/TCP: TCP for Transactions
by Mark Stacey is a discussion of the operation, advantages and
flaws of an experimental extension for TCP. Learn more about TCP as
you read about this new protocol designed to address the need for a
transaction-based transport protocol in the TCP/IP stack.

POSIX Thread Libraries by
Felix Garcia and Javier Fernandez is a look at five libraries which
can be used for multi-thread applications. The results of the
authors' studies are discussed in this article. They also give us
an in-depth look at threads: how they can be used and controlled in
your applications for greatest benefit.

Laptops for Linux! by Jason
Kroll is a review of the two laptop products currently available
for Linux: the Attache from LinuxLaptops and the AS-LT300 from ASL
Workstations. From ergonomics to software, find out all about these
two products on-line.

Linux and Open-Source
Applications by Peter F. Jones and M. B. Jorgenson
provides us with a look at system security and how to build a
secure and trustworthy computer platform. Learn about viruses,
worms and Easter Eggs and what they can mean to your system. The
authors answer the question, “Is open source the best way to get a
truly secure system?”

GRAPHON INTERVIEW

by Doc Searls

GraphOn's stock doubled in November. Early that month, the
company took a tack toward Linux with its new Linux Bridge product,
and acquired a technology patent protecting its whole Bridge series
of products. These products allow users to operate applications on
other platforms—essentially using those platforms' workstations as
terminals for applications run on servers elsewhere. GraphOn also
announced an OEM deal with Corel, which was a big hit at Comdex
with its new Linux distribution and application suite. One could
almost see the stock rise as the implications (in particular,
Windows-to-Linux migration) became apparent.

While at Comdex, I spoke with Robin Ford and Walt Keller, the
couple who founded GraphOn. Robin is Executive Vice President,
Sales and Marketing, and Walt is CEO and President. The talk was
recorded, and this is the edited transcript.

Doc: What's going on between
you guys and Corel?

Robin: Years ago, Corel
started developing a technology called J-Bridge, which allows you
to access a Windows application from any desktop over any kind of
connection. They were doing it because they needed to web-enable
their existing applications. GraphOn has that technology for the
UNIX and Linux market. We allow people to access a UNIX or Linux
application from any desktop over any connection. This is great
because you can run an X application over a low-bandwidth line, and
it's like running an X server on your desktop. Corel ran into some
challenges in their technology about this time last year. They had
the core technology—the server part was coming along well—but
they needed to put together the protocols and the client. They were
already partners of ours for other reasons, and as they became more
familiar with our technology, they realized we do this sort of
thing for a living. It made more sense for us to carry this
forward, as we had the low-bandwidth protocol. Thus, we acquired
Corel's technology, which was unfinished at the time, and
integrated it with our software.

Doc: And where are you with
it now?

Robin: We call it Win
Bridge, and we launched it here at the show. We've also “OEMed”
our technology to Corel. Thus, any Windows-based application can be
served to any desktop, and any Linux-based application can be
served to any desktop—over any connection.

Walt: The exciting news for
Corel is they can now insert very strong support into the Linux
desktop. They can take any of their Windows applications and run
them on those Linux desktops. By that, I mean the application is
still running in an NT environment, but you can view and manipulate
it from your Linux desktop as if it were running locally. That's
the beauty of this bridging technology. Complete cross-platform
capabilities.

Doc: So this has all kinds
of implications for support, migration...

Walt: Yes. It lets people
easily migrate into the Linux world. It's a difficult thing for
most enterprises. They can't say, “Hey, we're going to switch to
Linux”, and it's done. You need a migration path, and this
technology provides that path.

Doc: How is this playing out
in enterprises you know?

Walt: Well, the most
interesting stuff at the moment—to us, at least—is in China. They
don't want to deal with sole-source suppliers. They truly like the
idea of Linux, and are very committed to it. Yet when you visit the
schools, they're training on Microsoft. But the bridge between one
and the other is a migration path that we pave. They're figured out
ways to do that with server-based technology.

Doc: So you've got three
bridges here.

Robin: Linux Bridge, Win
Bridge and UNIX Bridge, each a component of a product called
Bridges.

Doc: How do you see it
playing out in the Linux movement in general?

Robin: Everybody agrees the
next step for Linux is the desktop. To be successful, Linux has to
be able to run Windows applications. Corel knows this, and they've
been very smart about their strategy. That's why they've OEMed the
Linux Bridge technology, and why it's very hot already, even though
we aren't shipping until the end of December. When we were on
ZD-TV, it was the most outrageous thing. Here was ZD-TV talking
about server-based computing—serving up Linux applications. They
invited people to come to the playpen part of our site and download
a Java applet that allows them to run WordPerfect running on Red
Hat on our server. It was amazing. We had thousands of people
registering to download the Linux server portion of our
product.

Walt: What knocked people
out was they could sit there on their PCs and run Linux without
ever loading it. An interesting concept, and a great way to start
down the road to Linux or teach it over the Internet.

Doc: I want to ask you guys
about this patent that seems to be a source of some
controversy.

Walt: We discovered the
controversy entirely by surprise. Obviously, it is not our
intention to be out there stifling innovation, especially in the
Linux community. We became aware of the patent because some of the
people we have in Seattle were developing this technology a long
time ago. We thought it was in the best interest of our
shareholders and customers that we acquire this patent. It covered
taking a Windows technology to a UNIX desktop using the X
server—in other words, right in the path of our own product
development. So our goal was just to acquire it and remove it as a
potential problem, for the good of everybody.

Doc: That's interesting. I
wonder sometimes if the reason to get a patent like this is as
prophylaxis against the Jay Walkers of the world.

Walt: It is. These things
are like baseball cards. You've got to trade them. If you don't
have any, you don't get to trade.

Doc: You give yourself the
right to be the alpha developer in this space.

Walt: It's a very strong
form of protection. The truth is, you can't work in this industry
without tripping over patents, and a patent of this type is a very
strong one. We had to have it—better us than someone else.

Doc: So you want the Linux
community to trust you to use it well.

Walt: That's right.

Doc: Let's go back to
origins here. For years, you guys were known as a hardware company.
What happened?

Walt: About three years ago,
we saw the light. Before that, we were in the terminal business,
selling to the X community. We did quite well, but the PC won the
desktop. What we actually discovered was thin-client computing. We
developed this technology for UNIX in the late '80s; the desktop,
the client side, was very thin and all the heavy lifting happened
on the server. But we were swimming against the tide in those days,
very much against the flow of what people thought client-server
should be.

Robin:
Desktop-centric.

Walt: And we were going the
opposite way. So finally, we decided to get out of the hardware
business, take this technology, and make it work on the desktop. We
found we were right in the middle of this new Internet conversation
which is much more server-centric. Sun snapped it up, then IBM, and
we were off and running. We funded ourselves last year, then went
public last July, and it's been a real ride ever since.

Doc: I've always been
interested in the soul of a company—where it comes from.

Robin: We're a
family-oriented company. In case you didn't

notice, Walt and I are married, and the place is very much a
family operation.

Doc: Are your kids
involved?

Robin: Yes, our daughter
works at the company. We welcome people bringing their kids in
during the day. It's not unusual to hear little ones in the
background. Our people work very hard, often for long hours, so we
try our best to integrate having a life with being a Silicon Valley
company. Although we've been around for a long time, we behave very
much like a start-up. That's our energy—very entrepreneurial—very
open-door—not very hierarchical. Walt is involved in almost
everything that's going on at the company. It's not a strict
reporting structure—just very entrepreneurial and very
productive.

Doc: You know each other.
That must count for something.

Walt: Everybody here knows
each other. This value system we have applies to acquisitions too.
We picked up this group in Seattle. The people there had been
together for years and wanted to be in on what we have going here.
The fit has been excellent.

Doc: You've been around
since what, 1982?

Walt: 1982, yeah—a long
time.

Doc: Were you married when
you started the business?

Robin: No. We got married in
1985. But we were together for a long time before we started out.
We just finally admitted to ourselves that it would work out.
(laughter)

Doc: That's a great
story.

Robin: It is a great story.
We've had fun, and we're having more fun than ever now.

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